The majestic, totalitarian absurdity of Montreal's Olympic Stadium

Last week, a committee studying the future of Montreal’s Olympic Stadium produced its report, concluding that the building and its surroundings should be recognized as a key component of Quebec’s cultural heritage.

I guess you could make an argument for that. The initial projections were that the stadium would cost $134-million. The final bill was $1.61-billion, in large part thanks to construction-industry corruption and mismanagement. This aspect of Quebec’s “heritage” remains well-established to this day.

But architecturally? Not so much.

In his 1990 book, Montreal Architecture: A Guide to Style and Buildings, Francois Remillard described the Olympic Stadium as a masterpiece of architecture’s organic modernism movement. I really never got that.

Organic architecture supposedly demands a sense of aesthetic equilibrium between a structure and its environment. (Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater is an oft-cited classic of the genre.) But the Big O is a massive curvilinear system of reinforced concrete blocks plopped down in the middle of a working-class neighbourhood of non-descript houses and duplexes. Yes, architect Roger Taillibert supposedly modeled the thing on animal life — and there is a recognizably dorsal quality to its inclined tower, as seen from its base. But the spiny creature has the look of an alien. And his home looks something like a sci-fi space hulk. Does it count as “organic” if the organism is from another planet?

Not that it isn’t a cool space hulk. As seen from a distance, the Olympic Stadium was, and remains, a genuinely majestic and imposing structure. I went through a baseball phase in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and rode my bike along Sherbrooke Street to hundreds of Expos games. I always was awed by the site of the Stadium’s profile as it rose up in the distance.

Yet it also must be said that there is something vaguely totalitarian about the Stadium’s architectural style. The inclined tower was designed as a suspension point for the stadium’s (variously failed) retractable roofs. But it also functions as a 175-meter-high observatory: One imagines Great Leader surveying his teeming throngs from on high, as they engage in some mass spectacle.

The Olympic Stadium was built in the early 1970s, long before the designers of retro facilities such as Baltimore’s Camden Yards self-consciously strove to create a sense of intimacy among fans. But even by the standards of its era, the Big O always was a cold, sterile hall of air and concrete. The building therefore encapsulates perfectly the paradox of all mass-spectacle architectural forms: It creates a sense of awe when seen from afar — or when seen from within, amidst the cheering delirium of a full house. But when it is mostly empty, attendees seem small and lonely, and the whole environment feels ridiculous.

My favourite baseball seats at the Stadium were the bleachers in left field. (Tickets were $1 each, but went up to $2.50 by the time I was old enough to go on my own.) From there, you could slip a rope, and roam up through the massive emptiness that extended up and over into the Stadium’s forgotten regions — great swathes of unused seating, which backed into acres of concrete pedestrian areas, punctuated by the occasional bathroom and shuttered concession stand. From within this area, the sound of 10,000 fans dutifully applauding a Mike Lansing base hit was almost imperceptible.

The function of totalitarian architecture — as with great cathedrals — is to make humans feel small, and thereby encourage them to throw themselves into a collective cause or belief greater than themselves. But in the domain of sports, the sheer size of a venue can make all of mankind seem impotent. The outfield fence at Olympic Stadium was 404 feet from home-plate in straightaway center field. A blast over this section of the fence should have been a grand event. But because there was another couple of hundred feet between the outfield fence and the actual end of the stadium, the effect was underwhelming: You felt like you were at one of those peewee baseball games, where the fence is brought in close to the infield, so that peewee “sluggers” can feel like pros.

There’s something fundamentally wrong with an outdoor stadium (which is what the Olympic Stadium has been for most of its existence) that no human being can hit a baseball out of. The closest anyone ever came was on the Expos’ Opening Day in 1988, when a 525-foot shot from the New York Mets’ Darryl Strawberry hit a speaker hanging from the roof’s concrete ring.

It was like mankind trying to touch the face of God, and God saying “nice try.”

Incidentally, if you are visiting Montreal, and you take the time to drive by the Stadium for a picture, I would urge that you take another few hours to visit the Montreal Botanical Garden, a beautiful 75-hectare expanse of gardens and greenhouses that sits directly across the street. When I lived in Montreal, I used to take my octogenarian grandmother Marika Kupitsky there for visits. Although I find flowers boring, she loved them — and the gardens provide me with my last memories of her being able to shuffle around a public space under her own power.

Those gardens, I expect and hope, will be maintained long after the Olympic Stadium is reduced to rubble. If you’re looking for “organic” design elements, it’s hard to beat a bunch of gardenias.

In the wake of a Grammy Awards ceremony that disappointed many, from Kanye West to the masses on Twitter lamenting the state of pop music, a historical perspective is key. Few are better poised to offer one than Andy Kim.